Public humiliation is the perfect response to college-level plagiarism. I disagree with the notion that it's a kind of theft (because there is no scarcity created), but on the other hand it's a very serious form of dishonesty. I think the plagiarists' classmates deserve to know who was lying to them to get ahead.

That the plagiarists' F's are under review is just grotesque.

Dan writes- Public humiliation is the perfect response to college-level plagiarism. I disagree with the notion that it's a kind of theft (because there is no scarcity created), Theft is theft, whether it is intellectual or property. That written words aren't scarce isn't the point, they were not the student's property and therefore not theirs to claim ownership to.

Bill is correct. Legally, there is no need for a good to be taken for it to constitute theft. The students are no more allowed to profit - be it grade or money - from the written work of another than I'm allowed to profit from a Bob Dylan song.

However, as a current student, I'll contribute that student privacy laws are quite draconian, and probably for good reason. The teacher may not even disclose that you got an A without your permission, at least in Oregon. The threat of an F and several hundred or thousand wasted dollars is enough for most folks.

Funny, how the Duke lacrosse team members were falsely accused of a crime and a number of faculty members got away with trying to figurative lynch them.

But when somebody violates clear cut rules and steals the hard work of another, they get off.

The irony would be if any of these students would go on to become lawyers specializing in intellectual property law.

Coleman obviously subscribes to the notion that unlawful actions should have a minimum of consequences.

Those 6 scholars need to take a reading comprehension course. How else would you explain doing something that you've been told will have painful repercussions.

You do the crime, you do the time and STFU.

I humiliated the sh*t out of people who cheated or made stuff up on essays. It was usually student athletes, commerce students, BBA students, or engineers, all of which believed that me requiring them to do actual research prior to submitting a measly 8 typed double-sided pages was grossly unfair as it's "only an elective" for most of them.

I especially enjoyed an e-mail I got from an irate father saying he wasn't paying "twelve f*cking thousand dollars a year" for his brat son to study business at an excellent university only to have him fail out for cheating on a "stupid" philosophy paper. A corporate lawyer, this father's e-mail was baldly threatening and yet the Dean of Arts actually stuck up for the professor and I and the kid had to suffer the consequences we imposed. Ironically enough, the class was an intro to critical thinking and informal logic. The "F" this p.o.s. received disqualified him from progressing to second year within his program. Gawd, I still get a tingle up my leg when I think of that sniffling little puke begging for his grade to be expunged...

Journalism course on ethics...Journalism course on ethics...

OK, now I'm back. Sorry, I was in a reverie for a minute, letting that phrase soak in.

I'm a sometimes adjunct professor of English, and I've dealt with a number of plagiarists. At first I used to feel bad for them, but then I saw enough to get jaded about it. There are, of course, the ones who don't know they're plagiarizing, not quoting or citing things appropriately, for example. Or some international students come from academic cultures with different ideas about plagiarism. It's usually pretty easy to tell when you're dealing with the accidental plagiarists. But most of them buy their papers from internet clearing houses, or wholesale cut and paste papers together from articles, which is really dumb, because I can just google a suspect passage to find its source. My most recent policy, for intentional plagiarists, is "You will fail the paper, and you may fail the class." This allows me some flexibility in how I deal with it, depending on the situation.

I do support this prof's hardcore approach to dealing with it. Plagiarism is rampant on college campuses, and it won't stop unless it becomes a serious taboo. I really hate it when I discover a paper plagiarize, because then I begin to suspect all the good papers, which is a shame. I try to plagiarism-proof my assignments, but one rough semester, when I was kind of phoning it in, I had a third of the students plagiarize their final paper, which was enough for them all to fail. It was crazy. In the age of google, the situation has really gotten out of hand.

Let's see...plagiarism. That means theft, laziness, sloth, dependency. Yep, looks like any teacher discouraging that should certainly be fired. Why, he was taking a chance on converting sure Obama voters into possible republicans!

The only review this kid's F should get is to make sure it's a capital F in bold face and italics.

He got the syllabus. It clearly stated the penalty for plagiarism and he still did it. Let's hope he wasn't planning on going into corporate law reviewing contracts.

I'm a grad student at Texas A&M-Commerce and in all of my classes, I've actually had to sign 1) an academic honesty policy (the school has a generic one or the prof can tailor it specifically to the class) and 2) a form stating I read and understood the syllabus of the course. Thesyllabus is treated as a contract between student and professor. They knew what the consequences were and did it anyway. I have no sympathy for the students. And if they can Google it, are they stupid enough to think their professor can't?

I am all for spelling out who has been kicked out for plagiarism, to make it clear the policy is being enforced. However, posting all the details on a blog may have been a bit much. Still, the prof should have been rebuked, not fired, for having a toe cross the line.

They FAILD to do the work
They FAILED in meeting integrity standards.
They obviously FAILED to read the syllabus or comprehend it.

F is what they get.
The students were just emulating BHO and Joe Bidden.

hyperbolist, sometimes you are frickin' awesome.